


truth of you

by treescape



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, Getting Together, M/M, Propaganda, The Clone Wars - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25861354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treescape/pseuds/treescape
Summary: Anakin would be lying if he said he didn’t also feel a small, possessive thrill whenever he thought about the fact that he got to see sides of Obi-Wan that the public never would.Or, Anakin sets about showing just how well he knows Obi-Wan.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 57
Kudos: 620





	truth of you

**Author's Note:**

> Because [tessiete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessiete/pseuds/tessiete) was talking about propaganda in the Clone Wars.
> 
> This is just pure fluff, really.

It was always a little unsettling, how Obi-Wan looked so immaculate in the holomags. Even when he was smiling, lips supposedly tilted with laughter, he seemed stiff and unnatural in a way that put Anakin’s teeth on edge. Obi-Wan was the most carefully composed person Anakin knew, calm and unruffled and assured.

But he was warm. Charismatic. Full of life. He was nothing at all like the watered down imitations of spirit and strength that made their rounds of the holonet.

Still, Anakin would be lying if he said he didn’t also feel a small, possessive thrill whenever he thought about the fact that he got to see sides of Obi-Wan that the public never would. The Senate’s newest publicity stunt of attaching media “faces” to the Jedi Order had turned Obi-Wan into something of a galactic sensation, but there were things that still belonged to Anakin. Strangers might see Obi-Wan postured and posed on the cover of _Coruscanti Life_ , hair artfully askew and eyes bluer than blue, but Anakin saw him standing steady through the exhaustion and anguish of war. Readers of _Galactic Gentlemen_ might learn that Obi-Wan enjoyed meditation and poetry, but Anakin could translate the tilt of his head across a crowded room. Subscribers to _Interplanetary Intelligence_ might pride themselves on knowing that Obi-Wan didn’t take sugar in his tea, but Anakin knew the way Obi-Wan’s lips thinned just a little when he thought he was losing an argument.

And if Anakin occasionally had to face the uncomfortable truth that there were some parts of Obi-Wan’s life that he, too, had no right to…

Well, Anakin tried to remind himself that he was privileged enough to possess what he already did. Obi-Wan was his brother, his partner, his friend.

He couldn’t very well ask Obi-Wan to be in love with him, as well.

\---

A distinctive gleam of auburn caught his eye across the table in his Temple quarters, and Anakin froze with his fork halfway to his mouth.

“Hey, can I see that?”

Ahsoka didn’t look up, but he could practically hear her roll her eyes. “Did you forget to charge your datapad again?”

“Of course not,” Anakin lied. “Yours is just closer.”

One hand hovered protectively over the screen for a moment, but Ahsoka finally sighed and slid her datapad across the table. “Five minutes.”

“Whatever you say, Snips.”

The device skidded to a stop right in front of him and Anakin glanced down at the article Ahsoka had been reading over her breakfast. The headline _Galactic General Reveals All: Inside the Mind of Master Kenobi_ glared up at him.

“It’s just like the rest of them,” Ahsoka said, and Anakin glanced up momentarily to see her shrug her shoulders. “All fluff, no substance.” Her words were dismissive, but she grinned as she said them. She religiously read all of the features the media ran on the Jedi, from the rather dubious eight page spread on Kit Fisto’s workout regime in _Health and Homeworld_ to Depa Billaba’s interview on “The Art of Negotiation” in _Astronomical Communication_.

Anakin was still trying to find a way to keep her from quoting his own interviews back at him for days every time one was published, a gleam in her eyes and amusement in her tone.

He skimmed the article quickly, trying not to linger too obviously over the image that had initially caught his eye. The angles of Obi-Wan’s face rarely failed to distract him off the field of battle. Ahsoka was right. For the most part, the piece was entirely filler—frivolous questions about Obi-Wan’s favourite speeder, as if flying was somehow one of his pastimes, or his favourite areas of Coruscant, as if he actually had time to idle on a planet that was rarely more than a stopover between missions. It was the kind of piece meant to make citizens of the Republic feel as if they actually _knew_ the Jedi without really revealing much at all.

Except, Anakin thought in distaste as his eyes lit on one question near the end, that they obviously weren’t trying for even a façade of accuracy anymore.

“It’s an outrage,” Anakin fumed later that day as he spun to block Obi-Wan’s blade. He circled towards the perimeter of the sparring room, his eyes never leaving Obi-Wan. “Your favourite colour most definitely _isn’t_ grey.” Anakin wasn’t even sure why it offended him so much; it was such an innocuous detail. Anakin might almost have thought his former Master had actually said it, just to be contrary, except that he’d been there when Obi-Wan had given the interview via comlink.

Perhaps it was simply that if the Senate was going to require them to surrender some of the little privacy left to them, here in the middle of a grueling war, the least the reporter could have done was kept his facts straight.

“I certainly don’t recall telling him that,” Obi-Wan agreed easily. He wasn’t breathing any harder than usual, though there was a slight sheen of sweat across the sweep of his collarbones. Anakin very decidedly ignored it. He certainly never _minded_ when Obi-Wan sparred shirtless, but it did give Obi-Wan a rather unfair (if unknown) advantage, in Anakin’s opinion.

“That’s because you didn’t.” 

“Ah, well. No one listens to me.” Obi-Wan gave Anakin a pointed look as he slowly advanced. “It’s hardly important anyway, Anakin.”

Obi-Wan used the sound of his own voice as a diversion to hide a sudden flurry of attacks, and for some time after, Anakin didn’t have a chance to fully process what he had said.

But that night, in the quiet of his own sleeping chamber, Anakin replayed the scene again and again in his mind—that piercing look, the sound of Obi-Wan’s voice.

_Ah, well. No one listens to me._

Obi-Wan had said the words so flippantly, as if they were a joke—or perhaps as if they were a matter of fact. But Obi-Wan hadn’t been comparing Anakin to the interviewer.

Had he?

The thought sat uncomfortably in his stomach, but even worse were the words Obi-Wan had followed with.

_It’s hardly important anyway, Anakin._

\---

Over the course of the next day, the thought continued to bother Anakin. Obi-Wan was right, of course; in the grand scheme of things, one question in one ridiculous interview wasn’t important at all. There were hundreds of more pressing matters to occupy their thoughts, including the fact that they were leaving the next day for the Ottega system.

But it rankled at Anakin that he’d so handily congratulated himself on knowing so much about Obi-Wan without ever stopping to consider whether Obi-Wan felt himself known or understood at all. Anakin knew he’d spent more than his fair share of time over the years doing the exact _opposite_ of what Obi-Wan wanted him to do; his own rebelliousness was something of a joke between them by now. But this was something different. This wasn’t about agreeing with Obi-Wan, or obeying him. It was about whether or not Obi-Wan knew that the things he cared about were, in fact, important to Anakin.

That _he_ was important to Anakin.

So Anakin would just have to make sure he _did_ know—which was, of course, how Anakin found himself in Obi-Wan’s quarters the very next morning, a good ten minutes before he knew Obi-Wan would rise. When Obi-Wan stumbled out of his sleeping chamber, he blinked in bewilderment at the sight of Anakin sitting at his kitchen table with two steaming cups of tea.

“You made tea,” Obi-Wan ventured, his voice and his face still soft with sleep. He scrubbed one hand unconsciously through his hair, and something curled, warm and happy, through Anakin’s veins.

“Your favourite.” The rich scent of sapir hung in the air as Anakin nudged one cup closer to where Obi-Wan stood. He had see Obi-Wan close his eyes to inhale that aroma more times than he could count.

And if Obi-Wan looked just the tiniest bit suspicious, Anakin could tell his former Master was also fighting back a pleased smile, so he considered it a rousing success.

\---

On the heels of that first victory, Anakin continued to search out opportunities to prove just how well he knew Obi-Wan. He did the things he’d always tried to do; he dropped hints as big as craters when he knew Obi-Wan should get some sleep, and he tried to assume as much of the weight of battle as he could, and he said what he could to lighten the atmosphere when Obi-Wan’s eyes became a little too tense.

But he also found other ways to interject himself into Obi-Wan’s routines.

A few weeks after Ottega, when negotiations on Caldua fell through and aid was refused to the Republic, Anakin took in the too-calm expression on Obi-Wan’s face and invited his Master to meditate. Obi-Wan stared for a moment before he finally agreed, but the way he snuck a glance at Anakin as they sat side by side was worth the boredom Anakin felt. After a gruesome battle on Jomea, when Anakin sensed the edges of pain from a migraine settle in, he managed to hunt down some Jeru tea to help soothe it.

Always they were little things, and always Obi-Wan looked at him for a moment in surprise, but he seemed so content that it eased something in Anakin’s heart just a little.

\---

When Anakin dropped a brand new edition of Arenaya Sa’vin’s aptly titled _Poems_ into Obi-Wan’s lap, the pages tightly bound between covers of deep blue, Obi-Wan yelped in surprise and sat jolt upright where he was sprawled on his couch.

“You needed a new copy,” Anakin said brightly. The one on Obi-Wan’s shelf, sitting right there behind him, was so worn that another reading might make it fall apart entirely.

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said slowly. He carefully surveyed the front cover of the book and then leafed through the pages, his touch almost absentminded. “It is one of my favourites.”

“I know.” Anakin smiled and flung himself down beside Obi-Wan on the couch. “You’ve only told me a thousand times.”

Obi-Wan held the book for a moment longer and then shifted carefully to set it on the low table next to him, reaching over the arm of the couch to do so. When he turned back to face Anakin, his eyes were narrow.

“Anakin.”

Anakin felt apprehension flutter its way dizzily through his stomach. “Obi-Wan.”

“Not that I don’t appreciate it, but what, exactly, is going on? First there was the tea, and then you began offering to _meditate_ with me, and then—”

The apprehension flared into something closer to hurt, and Anakin found himself cutting in without really intending to. “Why does there have to be something _going on_ for me to want to spend time with you or do nice things for you?” He crossed his arms over his chest and realized, too late, that it would make him look defensive. Uncrossing them now would call even more attention to him, so he left them as they were.

“That’s…Anakin, that’s not what I meant.” There was concern on Obi-Wan’s face, and his gaze was fixed on Anakin. “Whatever this is about, you don’t need to go out of your way to do those things. Just your presence has always been enough for me.”

Anakin stood, restless but not entirely certain what to do with the energy that skated through his limbs. The movement at least gave him a good excuse to drop his arms to his sides, approximating a more casual air. “It’s not about anything,” he insisted, even though, strictly speaking, that wasn’t true.

Obi-Wan looked up at him with a measured gaze, and Anakin shrugged, hyperaware of the way his shoulders lifted beneath his ears. He spoke, uncomfortable, just to fill the silence.

“I just…I know how much you hate this war. You think it leaves too little room for kindness.”

“Yes,” Obi-Wan said, the word barely a whisper between them. “I do.”

“And you won’t say it, but I know that sometimes you want to meditate with me as you once did with Master Qui-Gon. I know that when everything becomes too much, that book is one of the first things you go to.” Anakin’s eyes flickered to the book, sitting alone on its little table. The blue of its cover was soft in the light, and the words seemed to rush out of him, sounding inane to his own ears. “And I…I know that your favourite colour is blue. I just…I wanted you to know.” 

Realization dawned, inescapable, on Obi-Wan’s face, and Anakin was suddenly very, very aware that he had revealed too much.

“I didn’t mean to worry you,” he said quickly, and he turned to leave while he still could with any dignity intact.

“Anakin.” The sound of his own name didn’t stop him as he moved towards the door, but Obi-Wan’s next words did. “ _Anakin_. Do you know why my favourite colour is blue?”

He froze, because he _didn’t_ know, but something about the way Obi-Wan asked made him certain that he wanted to. There was the rustle of Obi-Wan’s robes, and the sound of feet on the floor, and Anakin could sense every movement Obi-Wan made as he came around to stand in front of Anakin.

“My favourite colour is blue,” Obi-Wan said, “because it is a colour we both share.” His fingers came up to gently touch Anakin’s temple, there by the crease of his eye, and then down to drift gently against the lightsaber at Anakin’s belt.

Anakin blinked down at Obi-Wan, and tried to think of what to say, but only two things occurred to him. The first was “ _Oh_ ,” so he threw caution to the wind and went with the second one instead.

“Can I…what if I wanted to know what it feels like to kiss you?”

Obi-Wan smiled, and pulled him in, and Anakin was able to add one more item to the list of things he knew about Obi-Wan.

Obi-Wan tasted like home.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm [treescape](https://treescape.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


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